Posted
by
timothyon Sunday August 10, 2008 @08:12AM
from the r-u-here-yet-lol dept.

There's a new reason to hope that the no-cell-chatter bill now under consideration in the US doesn't bring with it a Faraday-cage mandate, and that reason is landing safely. Reader ma11achy writes with an excerpt from a scary story (with an SMS-based happy ending) from the Irish Times: "Five people on a flight from Kerry to Jersey received mobile phone text instructions from a quick-thinking air traffic controller when he guided them in to a safe landing at Cork, after the plane lost all onboard electrical power, communications and weather radar soon after take-off from Kerry airport."

The names are all regions of the sea/oceans around the British Isles. Living about as far inland as is possible in Britain, it's all irrelevant to me, but I could probably still name most of them, probably in order, just from hearing them on the radio.

Me too, probably. But to my shame, here I am out somewhere "West of Shetland" (actually, the last land we saw was the Orkenys, but "whatever") and I don't actually know which sea area we're in. Checking the Met Office, we're near the border of Fair Isle and F

At KLAX on the 13th day of the month at 1650 zulu time the winds were 5 knots from slightly north of due west (280 degrees). 6 Statue miles of visibility with haze. Clouds are few (ie 1/8 of the sky) at 1500 feet and broken (ie 6/8 of the sky) at 18000 feet. Temp is 21 deg C with a dewpoint of 16 deg C. Altimeter is 29.84 inches of Mercury. There is a remark that the station is automated and some

Eventually he [the pilot] managed to contact Cork [the air traffic controller] on his phone, telling them about his problem and his intention to approach the airport from the sea.

He then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

That's why I love my Nokia 6822 and will never go back to any non-qwerty keyboard phone.
Without any effort I could outtype the Morse code in that vid. (Though I knew the text, but then again, I don't type much. Just under 50 texts a day on average.)

He then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

Because cellphone voice communications requires a constant link between the cellphone and the tower, where SMS is transmitted in bursts when the cellphone and the tower can hear each other.

You'll find in situtations where the cell towers are jammed with calls of people calling each other to see if everything is OK after a major storm, a SMS will get through even if you can't make a call.

True, you can continue texting when the tower is jammed with calls, but I doubt he got disconnected because of a rapid increase of simultaneous calls. A more plausible explanation would be that he exceeded the maximum range of some 30km from the tower. It would also make sense considering that he was supposedly approaching from sea.
GSM uses time division multiplexing, which means that the "constant link between the cellphone and the tower" is infact a set of short and frequent bursts. A burst sent from a p

It's a good thing they didn't have KPN as their cell provider (dutch company, so obviously not a chance), because I regularly get messages hours after they've been sent even with both phones in range of a cell tower and no other connectivity issues that I'm aware of.

The reliability isn't generally there.
They got lucky that the messages went through so quickly.

SMS services are inexpensive to provide and don't consume much bandwidth -- although they consume some storage.

The reason providers get away with charging so much for them is because they can, because enough customers perceive SMS as having value, being an extra feature, and tolerating the ridiculous, exhorbitant pricing.

[The pilot] then lost audio telephone contact but the air traffic controller switched to texting and told the pilot that he had a primary radar signal on the aircraft and that Cork would allow them to land there. He then used texts to guide the 30-year-old plane in.

I think a more sensible legislation would be legalizing poking obnoxious cellphone loudmouths in the eye with pencils..

Personally, I have found that its more annoying when other passengers try to strike up a conversation with me.

Once I was flying during the summer by myself for business and I ended up sitting next to this really intoxicated lady in her late 50's. On retrospect it was kind of funny, but kept asking me personal questions and even offered me several thousand dollars if guessed her age right as

Personally, I have found that its more annoying when other passengers try to strike up a conversation with me.

Amen to that. I wouldn't call myself reserved, a loner or even an introvert. But when I travel, I usually make it a point to carry along something to keep me occupied for the journey. Something constructive, like a book, or podcasts, or even a laptop, if I need to get work done.

Co-passenger conversations are tolerable, and even fine if the discussion is more on a/.-ish line, like on news, issues

Amen to that. I wouldn't call myself reserved, a loner or even an introvert. But when I travel, I usually make it a point to carry along something to keep me occupied for the journey. Something constructive, like a book, or podcasts, or even a laptop, if I need to get work done.

Put your ear buds on, slide one of these bad boys [aircraftspruce.com] over your head and you're golden.

Put your ear buds on, slide one of these bad boys over your head and you're golden.

I was Google searching to see if a gas mask is even allowed on a plane (it wouldn't surprise me if they're classified as a weapon, since they could be used as one component in an attack), but lo and behold, this page [instructables.com] actually has a picture of a guy flying American Airlines with a gas mask on. So, go for it!

Sitting next to inquisitive passengers is the worst. I once was next to a 6 or 7 year old version- who proceeded to chatter whilst I was quite airsick and throwing up. Luckily, the flight attendant moved him, before I throttled him.

Some years ago I remember reading about how a theatre in Beijing had solved their problem with patrons talking on their cell phones and annoying everybody else. When a ban on cellphones didn't work, they made an arrangement with the People's Liberation Army, which simply jammed the relevant band in the vicinity of the theatre.

The Mythbusters, while highly entertaining, would not win any prizes for designing good experiments. They are entertainers, not scientists, and you could poke huge holes in quite a high percentage of their endeavours, so I wouldn't cite them as a meaningful reference.

There is plenty of anecdotal evidence. Check NASA's airline database. [nasa.gov] A quick search for "PED" in text synopsis or narrative will bring up various stories where interference occurred and stopped occurring when the passenger turned off the device.

So there's plenty of evidence. The "problem" is that airline flight crews are interested in passenger safety, not in scientific research. If the navigation radios aren't working and they start working again when your cell phone is turned off, that's as far as it

"The researchers also determined that some of the emissions from mobile phones occurred in frequencies employed by Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers, which are increasingly vital for safe landings."

If anything, since the calls regularly occur on flights despite the ban, I would take that to be evidence that there is no risk.

Only so if there weren't incidents or problems related to interference. NASA released a report of problems encountered by passengers electronic devices and many of them relate to interference. You can view that here [nasa.gov]

It was a dark and stormy night (OK, it wasn't stormy, just light rain, with a cloud base at 600 feet, and it was very dark). I was returning from the UK with a friend in his light aircraft. It was my friend's first IFR approach for real - in the clouds, at night. The air was smooth though, so the conditions weren't too bad for a first time.

I was annoyed and disappointed in an episode where they were testing a story about the effects of a bad paint job (or some other thin substance...can't remember) on the rotor blades of helicopters. Two of the assistants (mitigating factor: one was the smokin' hot babe) decided to test it by doctoring the blades of a radio controlled helicopter. They went to a hobby store and bought one, then spent quite a bit of the alloted time trying to fly the thing. That's like testing a rumor about surfing by going

The mythbusters experiment was highly flawed. They used a single cellphone for all their tests.

There's this effect called "heterodyning", where two signals mix to produce two more (sum and difference).
When you have multiple cellphones going on, their signals will mix to produce all kinds of nasty products.
If one of them happens to land on the VOR/glideslope frequency, things can very suddenly get interesting.

Heterodyning will happen in any nonlinear medium, such as a diode or just two pieces of nonsimilar metal being connected. In particular, it will happily happen in the receiver front end of pretty well any radio, such as a VOR receiver, or any of my UHF/VHF/HF tranceivers, because transistors themselves (e.g. GaAsFET front ends) do not have linear response.

Take any scanner and drive through a downtown city and you'll get pager blare. That's

Throw around all the irrelevant ad-hominem remarks you want; it won't change the fact that I am right: signals will mix in a radio front end.
It also won't change the fact that you're an ignorant troll who can't admit he's wrong.

On the one hand the aluminum tube body of the typical modern aircraft is potentially an antenna which can deliver your cellphone signal at full strength (which isn't much, I'll grant you) directly into the cockpit electronics. On the other hand, the signal strength is jack diddly shit and your laptop backlight probably has at least as much chance to interfere with something, and the only time they make you stow that is on takeoff. It has nothing to do with the electronics, though; they just don't want stuff

Maybe one phone in a metal plane doesn't do anything.But how about 300 phones? And what happens if all of them go to max power because they can't reach a cell? Or when the plane's micro cell goes down.

Just putting an active GSM phone next to audio equipment makes it buzz. With such phones you can even tell that you are about to get a call just by the distinctive tatata-tatata-tatata-ta-ta sound from the interference.

My GSM cell phone causes audible noises whenever it's near powered computer speakers or poorly-shielded microphones, produces a weird flickering on my CRT monitor, and I've seen it cause erratic mouse behavior (contextual menus pop up when I'm not touching the mouse). I have no idea what it does to airplanes, but I have to move my phone away from my computer when I take a call, so it's not a load of crap.

Someone is going to say that complete communication failure is too rare to worry about, and they will be right and wrong.

While the situation described shouldn't effect new communication rules, there are many different ways cell phone communications can be useful. Furthermore, the ability to communicate using cell phones is a deterrent to hijackings. The person in charge of the plane is not certainly in charge of all communications, and thats a good thing.

Timothy (The "editor") wrote "There's a new reason to hope that the no-cell-chatter bill now under consideration in the US doesn't bring with it a Faraday-cage mandate, and that reason is landing safely."

How about reading TFA: "the twin-engined Piper plane... with four passengers". It wasn't a fucking jumbo jet. That kind of plane is never going to be affected by any "no cell chatter" rules, much less have any "Faraday cage" built into it. And I think an airliner would have multiple multiple communications backups.

Reminds me of the wackos who say cell phones should be allowed in cinemas "in case of terrorist attack".

The only reason Timothy linked this with the cell phone ban on passenger planes is that it is guaranteed to start up a multi-page thread arguing that subject again, reardless of its irrelevance. Too bad he couldn't think of a way to get gun rights or evolution into the story too.

"Reminds me of the wackos who say cell phones should be allowed in cinemas "in case of terrorist attack"."

They've got a point though - cell phones are an excellent way of setting bombs off remotely, how else are you going to mount a terrorist attack if they're banned in cine.....oh.....hang on... Ah, I get your point now...

There's a new reason to hope that the no-cell-chatter bill now under consideration in the US doesn't bring with it a Faraday-cage mandate, and that reason is landing safely.

I hope this law never gets passed and I don't care what lie the gov't has to tell to keep cell phones turned off. Planes are already noisy. People who talk on cell phones talk LOUDLY. Add a lot of people in a noisy environment all talking at the same time, and that makes for a lot of noise.

So a 4 passenger light aircraft landed with no electric power. Big whoop. Electrical failure on an aircraft like that means the radios go out, you lose a couple instruments, and that's it. Most of the important instruments for maneuvering are either powered by the pitot static system or an engine driven vacuum pump. Speaking of the engines, their ignition systems are powered by a fully redundant engine driven system and don't require any external electric power.

If the pilot wouldn't have had the cell phone, he would have been given signals from a light gun as he approached the airport. Losing radios isn't exactly all that uncommon, especially in older aircraft, so pilots and controllers have come up with ways to handle the situation.

Even the title sounds pretty silly to a pilot. Air traffic controllers didn't land the plane-- the pilot did. It MIGHT have been a story if the guy was flying through dense clouds and fog and lost control just as another radar contact was intersecting his vector at high speed or something.

Sheesh! Air controllers don't land planes, stricken or otherwise. Aircrews land airplanes. The airplane will land (and fly) just fine without an "air controller".

Air traffic controllers _clear_ airplanes to land. This involves traffic de-confliction and statistically improves safety but there are plenty of non-towered airports where the aircrew routinely lands without benefit of Air Traffic Control.

The controller doesn't land the plane. The controller works with pilots to keep the airspace and runway coordinated and air traffic moving smoothly. That's an essential job, but it doesn't include flying.

After all, there's no way (in a short time) to MacGyver a cell phone SMS to an autopilot. And this plane may not have an autopilot anyhow.

The pilot followed standard lost contact procedures and augmented them with the call to the controller. The controller wisely used SMS when voice was lost.

Anyhow, the article writer's hook for large commercial aircraft is nonsensical since this is a four-seat aircraft and wouldn't fall under those rules anyhow.

First off, when an aircraft is in an emergency, you can do a lot of things that would otherwise be banned. You save your fanny first, then worry about regulations later.

Second, the reasons given for the cell phone ban appear to be largely misinformed. I know of two: potential interferrence with aircraft equipment, and interferrence with ground cell phone towers.

To demonstrate that cell phones categorically do not interfere with aircraft equipment, in the US, the FAA would require that each cell phone design demonstrate that it does not cause interferrence. Change the design, or have a different design? New demonstration required. Cell phones passing the test would more than likely need some sort of identifying mark showing that they were approved for aircraft use.

Don't like this idea? Perhaps you'd like to fly with someone who can interfere with the aircraft instruments. I can imagine the headlines: "FAA fails to insure airline safety. Cell phone determined to be cause of crash claiming 150 lives!"

As much as I dislike the airlines getting a free ride on their phones being the only ones usable on the aircraft, those phones have been verified not to interfere with other equipment on the aircraft.

The other problem is that ground based cell phones were designed for ground usage. They punch into whatever cell phone towers happen to be in range. As long as the cell phone itself isn't at a higher elevation, it only reaches a limited number of towers. Put it in an airplane, and it reaches a much larger number of towers. Which tower should be handling the call? Who knows?

This might not be too bad for one or two cell phones, but open it up to all cell phones, and significant interference could result.

It is possible to design a cell phone for airborne use. All it takes is money.

One can, of course, legislate this problem, and declare whatever the legislators think will please the electorate the most. But that, of course, does not change the laws of physics.

OK, let me weigh these options. On one hand, there is the one-in-ten-million risk that someday I might need to have a cellphone conversation with ATC to talk me down when my entire panel fails. On the other hand, there is the virtual certainty that I will be sitting next to some compulsive-talking boiler-room operator on every commercial flight from now until eternity.
Which to choose, which to choose . . .

SMS does get through when voice can't. Especially since analog AMPS service was discontinued.

Last month I was using SMS to communicate with a friend who was spending a week horse camping in San Mateo County. This isn't exactly Outer Nowhere, but there's a big area of hilly parks west of Silicon Valley with no cell towers. She was camped in a valley, and I couldn't reach her with voice calls, but if I sent her a text message, it would be delivered the next time she rode up to a ridge line and briefly go

There have been pretty good rules around for over 60 years regarding what the pilot should do when they can't contact the tower. Similarly the tower has an old red/green light gun for communicating with planes that can't hear.

It's unlikely there was any safety added by the cell phone sms messages. In fact, bypassing the usual no-radio procedures may have compromised safety. There may be some flags dropped on this play.

No one's life was in the hands of a text message. Airplanes fly on the principles set out by Bernoulli and Newton, *not* Marconi. A radio failure is something that's trained for, and the aircraft's captain was merely using an additional tool at his disposal; a radio failure should never be something that's life threatening.

A private piston-powered aircraft has an electrical failure, and it's Slashdot-worthy news that the pilot managed to get a landing clearance on his cell phone?

Must be a slow news day. This sort of thing happens fairly regularly in the US. Two friends of mine had the same thing happen to them a couple of years ago and managed to re-establish communications via cell phone. No big deal, and certainly not worthy of the front page on Slashdot, which is clearly trying to spin this as some sort of "OMG DONT BANZ T

But there already are phones on airplanes. The complaints from passengers is that they cost too much compared to their cellulars. I think it's appropriate that a proven safe telephone system be used and the users pay extra for it, in part for safety and in part to reduce the chatter. Ear plugs should not be necessary to sleep on a flight, as prudent as they might be.

And let's not overlook the fact that the plane in the OP had already lost all its sensitive guidance devices, so at that point of course it'

Right, which solves the problem. Some of us don't want anybody talking on a phone on the plane under any circumstance. I really and truly don't care whether they're dealing with business, I don't want to hear it, especially since it's usually a multi hour flight and I have nowhere to go.

If we really want to compromise on this, a special cellphone cabin for the business class would be a reasonable compromise. But a lot of people don't want the added annoyance of cellphone idiots while they're flying.

I don't see what the big deal is. People talking on a cell phone is hardly any different than two people talking to each other on the plane. Except you only get (have) to hear one side of the conversation.

If you don't want to hear it, then get ear plugs, plug in your iPod, or just not listen. I mean, seriously, you don't hear people complaining about cell phones at restaurants, yet it is the same concept.

When did flying become a "quiet zone"?

I think it would be a non-issue if people talking on cell phones would use a normal level of volume to speak. It becomes a problem when people are practically yelling on the phone and can be heard three rows down the airplane. Most normal face to face conversations on an airplane are barely audible b/c of the background noise on the plane.

You are either from Europe, Japan or don't own a cell phone in the US. I've had a plan with every single major carrier in the US and you have no choice but to yell into your cellphone the reception is just that bad. With that in mind I avoid having drawn out conversations in public places on my cell but there are idiots who don't. I've lost count of how many times I've been on the train on my way to work and heard something like this:

That's not true, not even a little bit. Reception is a function of what the antenna is or is not doing, it has absolutely nothing to do with what the microphone is picking up.

It would be a very broken phone which was sending clear signals to the tower and garbling at the microphone end of things. If that's what's going on the appropriate fix is to get a decent phone. Even my several years old razr has no issues with that at all.

That's not true. Yes you can't lip read over the phone, but it's a common misconception that you have to speak loudly in order to be heard on a cell phone.

Unlike landlines, the cellphone doesn't pipe you're own voice back to you. This results in you having to guess rather than know how loud the other party thinks you're talking and for cellphone users to generally yell.

On the rare occasion where I use my phone on the bus, _I_ can't hear what I'm saying and the other party rarely if ever has any trouble hear

I don't see what the big deal is. People talking on a cell phone is hardly any different than two people talking to each other on the plane.

As others have already pointed out: it is, my friend, oh well, it is.

Except you only get (have) to hear one side of the conversation.

Which is even worse. I find it much more easy to ignore a completely understandable talk between two people. With just half of the communication present, some nerve tickles all the time and tries to make sense of all this gibberish.

If you don't want to hear it, then get ear plugs, plug in your iPod, or just not listen.

Thank you, but I get seriously irritated when not hearing what goes on around me. I dislike ear plugs and I dislike the wet atmosphere they generate inside my ears; earphones, on the other hand, induce very discomforting pain (the anatomically more suitable earphones are so sound-proof that I can't use them in public; see above).

I mean, seriously, you don't hear people complaining about cell phones at restaurants, yet it is the same concept.

In my country, this is mainly because nobody uses the cell phone while in a restaurant. If they have to, they go outside. Very polite.

When did flying become a "quiet zone"?

Why should it become a terroristic attack on my ears and--maybe more importantly--on my intellect? Flying is uncomfortable enough as it is, no need for additional yelling.

Give it up, friend. People who are determined to do whatever they please whenever they please and have a "screw the rest of the world" attitude will always attack anyone who dares question their right to do so.

Give it up, friend. People who are determined to do whatever they please whenever they please and have a "screw the rest of the world" attitude will always attack anyone who dares question their right to do so.

Must be nice. I pay $80/m for my Sidekick, and I get all that stuff "free". I have yet to hit one of those "unlimited" caps, nor to see anything inexplicable with my bill.

Enjoy that Verizon-branded rape! Ask for some lube next time!

(I will never touch Verizon. Any cell company that removes a functional button to stick their logo in, are a bunch of assholes. See the Motorola RAZR on Verizon - right soft-key is nonfunctional and contains the Verizon logo on the screen.)